This sermon was preached by John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, at Whitehall on 29th February 1627/8
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He that will die with Christ upon Good Friday must hear his own bell toll at Lent. He that will be partaker of his Passion at last must conform himself to his discipline of prayer and fasting before. Is there any man that in his chambers hear a bell toll for another man and does not kneel down to pray for that dying man? And then when his charity breathes out for another man, does he not also reflect upon himself and dispose himself as if he were in the state of that dying man? We begin to hear Christ’s bell toll now, and is not our bell in the chime? We must be in his grave before we come to his resurrection, and we must be in his deathbed before we come to his grave. We must do as he did, fast and pray, before we can say as he said: In manus tuas, Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. You would not go into a medicinal bath without some preparatives – presume not upon that bath, the blood of Christ Jesus, in the sacrament then, without preparatives neither. Neither say to yourselves: we have preparatives enough, warnings enough, many more sermons before it come to that; and so it is too soon yet. You are not sure you shall have more, not sure you shall have all this, not sure you be affected with any. If you be when you are, remember that as in the custom in these cities, you hear cheerful street music in the winter mornings, but yet there was a sad and doleful bell-man that waked you and called upon you two or three hours before that music came; so for all that blessed music which the servants of God shall present to you in this place, it may be of use that a poor bell-man waked you before, and though by his noise, prepared you for their music.
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Here I shall only present to you two pictures, two pictures in little, two pictures of dying men, and every man is like one of these and may know himself by it: he that dies in the bath of a peaceable and he that dies upon the rack of a distracted conscience. When the devil imprints in a man, a mortuum me esse non curo, I care not though I were dead. It were but a candle blown out and there were an end of it all, where the Devil imprints that imagination.
God will imprint an Emori nolo, a loathsomeness to die and fearful apprehension at his transmigration. As God expresses the bitterness of death in an ingemination, morte morietur, in a conduplication of deaths: he shall die, and die – die twice over. So oegrotando aegrotabit, in sickness he shall be sick, twice sick – body-sick and soul-sick; sense-sick and conscience-sick together. When, as the sins of his body hath cast sicknesses and death upon his soul, so the inordinate sickness of his soul shall aggravate and actuate the sickness of his body. His physician ministers and wonders it works not: he imputes that to phlegm and ministers against that, and wonders again that it works not. He goes over all the humours and all his medicines, and nothing works, for there lies at his patient’s heart a damp that hinders the concurrence of all his faculties, to the intention of the physician, or the virtue of the physic.
Loose not, O blessed apostle, thy question upon this man: O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy sting? For the sting of death is in every limb of his body and his very body is a victorious grave upon his soul. And as his carcass and his coffin shall lie equally insensible in his grave, so his soul which is but a carcass and his body which is but a coffin of that carcass shall be equally upon his deathbed. And Satan’s commissions upon him shall not be signed by succession, as upon Job, first against his goods, and then his servants, and then his children, and then himself; but not all upon his life. But he shall apprehend all at once, ruin upon himself and all his, ruin upon himself and all him, even upon his life – both his lives, the life of this and the life of the next world too. Yet a drop would redeem a shower and a sigh now a storm then. Yet a tear from the eye would save the bleeding of the heart and a word from the mouth now, a roaring or (which may be worse) a silence of consternation, of stupefaction, or obduration at that last hour. Truly, if the death of the wicked ended in death, yet to scape that manner of death were worthy a religious life.
To see the house fall and yet be afraid to go out of it; to leave an injured world and meet an incensed God; to see oppression and wrong in all thy professions, and to foresee ruins and wastefulness in all thy posterity; and lands gotten by one sin in the father, moulder away by another in the son; to see true figures of horror and lie, and fancy worse; to begin to see thy sins but then and find every sin (at first sight) in the proportion of a giant, able to crush thee into despair; to see the blood of Christ imputed not to thee, but to thy sins; to see Christ crucified and not crucified for thee, but crucified by thee; to hear this blood speak not better things than the blood of Abel did, but louder for vengeance than the blood of Abel did.
This is his picture that have been nothing, that hath doth nothing, that hath proposed no Stephen, no Law to regulate, no example to certify his conscience. But to him that hath done this: death is but a sleep.
Many have wondered at that note of St Chrysostom’s: till Christ’s time, death was called death plainly, literally death; but, after Christ, death was called but sleep. For, indeed, in the Old Testament before Christ, I think there is no one metaphor so often used as sleep for death and that the dead are said to sleep. Therefore, we wonder sometimes that Saint Chrysostom should say so. But this may be that which that Holy Father intended in that note, that they in the Old Testament who are said to have slept in death are such as then, by faith, did apprehend and were fixed upon Christ. Such as the good men of the Old Testament, and so there will be many instances against Saint Chrysostom’s note. That to those that die in Christ, death is but a sleep. To all others, death is death, literally death. Now of this dying man that dies in Christ, that dies the death of the righteous that embraces death as a sleep, must we give you a picture too.
There is not a minute to do it, not a minute’s sand. Is there a minute’s patience? Be pleased to remember that those pictures which are delivered in a minute, from the print to the paper had many days, weeks, months’ time for the graving of those pictures in copper.
So the picture of that dying man that dies in Christ, that dies the death of the righteous, that embraces death as a sleep, was graving all his life. All his public actions were the lights, and all the private the shadows of this picture. And when this picture comes to the press, this man to the straits and agonies of death, thus he lies, thus he looks, this is he. His understanding and his will is all one faculty. He understands God’s purpose upon him and he would not have God’s purpose turned any other way. He sees God will dissolve him and he would fain be dissolved to be with Christ. His understanding and his will is all one faculty. His memory and his foresight are fixed and concentrated upon one object: upon goodness. He remembers that he hath been proceeded in the sincerity of a good conscience in all the ways of his calling, and he foresees that his good name shall have the testimony and his posterity the support of the good men of this world. His sickness shall be but a fomentation to supple and open his body for the issuing of his soul; and his soul shall go forth, not as one that gave over his house, but as one that travelled to see and learn better architecture, and meant to return and re-edify that house according to those better rules. And those thoughts which possess us most awake meet us again when we are asleep. So his holy thoughts - having always conversant upon the directing of his family, the education of his children, the discharge of his place, the safety of the State, the happiness of the king all his life – when he is fain asleep in death, all his dreams in that blessed sleep, all his devotions in heaven shall be upon the same subjects, and he shall solicit hi, that sits upon the throne, and the Lamb, God, for Christ Jesus’ sake, to bless all these with his particular blessings. For so God giveth his beloved sleep so as that they enjoy the next world and assist this.
So then, the death of the righteous is a sleep. First, as it delivers them to the present rest. Now men sleep not well fasting. Nor does a fasting conscience, a conscience that is not nourished with a testimony of having done well, come to this sleep; but dulcis somnus operanti, the sleep of a labouring man is sweet. To him that laboureth in his calling, even this sleep of death is welcome .When thou lie down thou shalt not be afraid, says Solomon. When the physician says: sir, you must keep your bed – thou shalt not be afraid of that sickbed. And then it follows: And thy sleep shall be sweet unto thee. Thy sickness welcome, and thy death too. For in those two David seems to involve all: I will both lay me down in peace and sleep. Embrace patiently my deathbed and death itself.
So then this death is a sleep as it delivers us to a present rest. And then, lastly, it is also as it promises a future waiting in a glorious resurrection. To the wicked, it is far from both. Of them, God says: I will make them drunk, and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake. They shall no part in the second resurrection.
But for them that have slept in Christ, as Christ said of Lazarus: Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may wake him out of sleep. He shall say to his Father: Let me go that I may wake them who have slept so long in expectation of my coming.
And those that sleep in Jesus Christ (says the apostle) will bring God with him, not only to fetch them out of the dust when he comes, but bring them with him, that is: declare that they have been in his hands ever since they departed out of this world.
They shall awake as Jacob did and say, as Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and this is no other but the house of God and the gate of heaven. And into that gate they shall enter and, in that house, they shall dwell, where shall be no cloud nor sun, no darkness or dazzling but one equal light, no noise nor silence but one equal music, no fears nor hopes but one equal possession, no foes nor friends but an equal communion and identity, no ends or beginnings but one equal eternity.
Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our callings that we may thus sleep in thy peace, and wake in thy glory, and change that infallibility which thou affordest us here, to an actual and undeterminable possession of that kingdom which thy Son our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen
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